The Postal Service is constantly working towards increasing the speed and efficiency in delivering mail. To this end, the processing of mail is increasingly being performed by automatically controlled and operated machinery, which sorts mail in accordance with its ultimate destination for ease and efficiency of delivery to a specific delivery point along a mail carrier's route.
As part of the automation and efficient delivery of the mail, sorter machines have been developed that sort regular mailpieces in a sequence corresponding to the delivery point route used by the mailperson for delivery to individual addresses. An example of a carrier sequence bar code sorter is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,143,225. However, these machines cannot sort the larger, odd shaped and non-uniform rigid flat mailpieces described below.
Present mail handling systems are designed to process regular mail and/or flat mail, the latter being defined as FSM 881 automation mail in the Domestic Mail Manual. Flat mail ranges from four to fifteen and three-quarters inches in length, from four to twelve inches in width, and from 0.007 to 1.25 inches thick, weighing from 0.01 to 6 pounds. The types of mail in the flat category include, but are not limited to: catalogs, magazines (with or without sleeves or polywrap), newspapers, padded envelopes, single sheet flyers, and compact disks. Currently, there are no known prior art machines that perform sequencing of such flats mail.
A large quantity of flat mail today comprises mass mailings, which may include several thousand or more magazines, catalogs and the like which are delivered to Postal sorting facilities in bundles, each piece within the bundle organized in delivery point sequence, primarily according to an eleven digit POSTNET delivery point designation, with each mailpiece imprinted with a POSTNET barcode representing the delivery point of the mailpiece. The first five digits of the POSTNET barcode identify the post office servicing the area encompassing the designated delivery point, the second four digits identify a zone within the area serviced by the designated post office, and the last two digits identify the distinct delivery point, such as an individual home or an apartment unit in a building, etc. Each bundle of similar mailpieces is prepared by a magazine or catalog publisher, or other mass mailing house, in delivery point sequence according to a POSTNET designation, and then delivered to a postal facility for sortation and further processing. It should be understood however that not all bundles or mailings are comprised of sequenced mailpieces.
Prior to the present invention, such flat mail was sorted by hand by postal employees, and placed in bundles according to delivery points along a mail delivery route. This manual sortation is time consuming and highly labor intensive. Therefore, an apparatus was considered that would automatically receive many bundles of mail documents, each bundle composed of similar pieces of mail organized by delivery point sequence, which apparatus would merge the documents in each bundle into a discrete new document group, where each new individual group includes mail documents designated for delivery to a single delivery point. Regular mailpieces addressed to the same delivery point are added to each new individual group and the combined mailpieces are placed in a pocket or container in a sequence corresponding to the selected delivery route. The apparatus under consideration would also be capable of adding non-barcoded mail documents to each document group, in a mailing where every delivery point address along a route receives a particular piece of mail.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to automate the collation of flat mailpieces, each imprinted with a POSTNET barcode or other delivery point indicia, which mailpieces are received from the publisher of the mailpiece in a delivery point sequence or non-barcoded mailings where every delivery point address along a route receives a particular piece of mail, into a single stream of new document groups and which mailpieces are merged that are consistently oriented and in delivery point sequence for delivery of each new group to a designated delivery point address.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a collator apparatus that permits the rapid feeding of large volumes of bundles of both pre-sequenced and non-barcoded similar flat mailpieces into a sortation system that creates new individual groups of dissimilar mailpieces for delivery of each new group to a single delivery point.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a collator apparatus that captures the image of a delivery point indicia on each piece of flat mail processed by the collator, and transmits that delivery point data to a data processing unit for operational control of the collator.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a flat mailpiece collator comprising multiple feed stations and which can be operated by one person.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a document unloading device that rapidly and firmly grips an individual mailpiece in a stack of mailpieces, and transfers the mailpiece for deposit onto a new group of mailpieces addressed to the same delivery point.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system for rejecting mailpieces which include a delivery point indicia which cannot be read by the image capture device, or which are out of sequence in the original stack of mailpieces.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for retaining a mailpiece on a buffer platform until a new group of mailpieces bearing the same delivery point indicia and/or collated to the same delivery point, is advanced by a collation conveyor to a position beneath the buffer platform.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a collator for merging separate groups of delivery point sequenced mailpieces into a single stream of new mailpiece bundles that are consistently oriented in delivery point sequence, and which collator incorporates a first data processing unit for controlling the collator operation, and a second data processing unit which is used off-line from the collator for software and U.S. Postal Service data network interface development.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for merging separate groups of delivery point sequenced bundled flat mailpieces into a single stream of mailpieces that are consistently oriented in individual new bundles for each delivery point, which apparatus includes a plurality of individual document feed units processing the mailpieces and depositing the mailpieces on a single moveable conveyor system which includes a plurality of pockets, each pocket representing a different and distinct delivery point.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of an automatic unloader for depositing multiple new groups of consistent delivery point addressed mailpieces from a conveyor into containers, where the new groups of mailpieces are arranged in an order corresponding to the sequence of delivery over a predetermined delivery route.